04/03/2010

Ever since appearing on Dancing With The Stars, we have a new found respect for Steve Wozniak. Screw the co-founded Apple thing … or the US Festival … or contributing to the personal computer revolution … The Woz danced the Tango in competition with a pulled hamstring and a fracture in his foot – that sh*t is IMPRESSIVE!

Aside from having the balls to compete in something totally out of his element on national television, what we also really love about Steve Woz is that he’s totally cool, likeable and approachable – which is very refreshing since so many peeps of fame these days are arrogant pricks. Take for instance the present moment … Friday night – April 2, 2010 … Where’s Woz? He’s camped outside the Apple Store inside the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA. Woz will be there all night … just like the other hardcore MacHeads … waiting to become a day one proud owner of the iPad when they go on sale Saturday at 9:00AM PST.

We’re sure Woz could’ve used his “in the biz” connections to secure his iPad … but dude doesn’t roll like that. In a recent Newsweek interview, Woz stated that he pre-ordered a few iPads and will be waiting in line overnight to pick them up … just for fun. LOL … that is sick. A technology industry rock star, just chillin’ in line with the general public, waiting to become an early adopter … gotta love it!

04/13/2008

It was the rage: bubble memory–an invention that promised to replace the hard disk. Invented by Bell Labs in the 1970s, it was commercialized by Intel, and heavily marketed in the early 1980s as the ultimate answer for microcomputer memory storage.

Bubble memory would replace the hard disk, said its proponents. Not only would it retain its memory after the computer had been turned off, unlike Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips, but it wouldn’t have any moving parts.

The full name was Magnetic Bubble Memory. It was a method of recording data in bubble-like magnetic regions on the surface of a chip. Perhaps its most noteworthy advantage was a ruggedness that attracted the military, which continued to use the technology after its failure in the market. Bubble memory can withstand high temperatures, dust, humidity, and high radiation without falling; it’s also removable.

So what happened? First of all, it turned out to be harder to make bubble memory than expected. The fabrication process never proved to be smooth or cheap enough to compete with other technologies.

Furthermore, it required a complex controller, not unlike a hard disk controller, to make the system work. Worse, it was power hungry. While it was a static technology when inactive, it required a lot of juice to move those bubbles around. Users also discovered that glitches in the data were a problem. And finally, it was slow.

All this added up to expense and inconvenience. The memory chips themselves never came close to the price points of DRAM chips, and hard disks continued to drop in price and improve (a practice still happening). Combined, the two managed to pop bubble memory’s chances at wide acceptance.

I imagine it wouldn't surprise the people who know me that I have done this numerous times. When you write fiction, you tend to want to see what sort of public picture you're creating on the Internet.

But I've also run searches on my name to find other Michael Bursteins out there. I'm not sure why I've done this, although I always felt an odd sort of identification with the others who share my name. For example, I'm a fan of the Israeli actor and singer Mike Burstyn because we share a name. (Burstyn's original name was Michael Burstein; I believe he changed the spelling for his career, since it was easier to fit on a marquee.) I make a point of seeing Burstyn perform whenever I can.

Burstein is not a common name, and my father used to tell me that there was a time when the only Bursteins in the Manhattan phone book were our family. I tended to think that there weren't too many other Bursteins out there. But with the rise of the Internet, I've found many others. Including other Michael Bursteins.

Why I am sharing this? Because today's New York Times has an interesting article on the topic of finding people with your own name: Names That Match Forge a Bond on the Internet by Stephanie Rosenbloom. I'm apparently not the only person who's done this. In fact, according to the article, a writer named Angela Shelton has just published a book about meeting 40 other women with her same name. The article also notes why we might feel an odd kinship with someone who shares our name – social psychologist Brett Pelham has done studies that show that our names, and the letters within them, are influential in our lives.

To answer the question: Yes, I do this every day, and just partly to see who is linking/talking about me. Mostly, tho, because there are so many guys out there named Tom McMahon. There's Tom McMahon the Actor, Tom McMahon the Canadian Musician, Tom McMahon the Kids & Family Newspaper Columnist, and Tom McMahon the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, just to name a few.

02/27/2008

Today’s delivery of the Rockford Register Star might be delayed because of weather-related poor road conditions. Deliveries are being made and will be completed as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

02/14/2008

Wikipedia: Cars treated with the rustproofing displayed a sticker in the window with the name "Rusty Jones" and a picture of the cartoon character (also named Rusty Jones) from the company's TV commercials.

So there were hundreds of thousands of cars with that Rusty Jones guy on them, and they bought enough TV advertising so that decades laters people still remember the "Hello Rusty Jones, Good Bye Rusty Cars" jingle. Yet I can't find a single image of the Rusty Jones guy on the entire internet. Weird, eh? Anybody got one?

06/07/2006

They've also come in for criticism from people on the right for alleged censorship in Google News, with charges that Google is purging itself of conservative news sites. And many people complained that Google, which puts up special logos for all sorts of other holidays, didn't do anything to recognize Memorial Day.

That last point seems minor, but for some people it seems to have been the last straw. And it made me wonder if Google's position isn't rather vulnerable. People like Google and use it, but its competition — sites like Ask.com, Dogpile.com, and Clusty.com — is just a mouseclick away. Ask.com even has a pretty good substitute for Google News.

Since Google does special logos for all sorts of odd days, would it have killed them to come up with a nice, tasteful logo for Memorial Day? And while we're on the subject, how about Easter? No logo there since 1999. Why? Or Christmas. None there either. I'm not talking about all this Winter Holiday crap, I'm talking December 25, with an actual Christmas theme for the logo. Why do they persist in ticking off their customers needlessly? What's the point? Or are they just clueless?